The present invention relates to evidence and property tracking systems and methods for use particularly in law enforcement.
Police, jails, prisons and other government authorities typically collect evidence and property, such as weapons, clothing, money, drugs, and documents, for use in subsequent investigations and legal proceedings, or simply to hold while a person is detained. That evidence and property must be secured against unintentional or intentional tampering, theft, substitution or loss to preserve its value in those investigations and proceedings. For example, if a critical piece of evidence is lost, or if a witness at a trial cannot positively identify the evidence and the chain of custody from the time and place where it was collected to the time and place where it was authenticated, then a suspect who committed a crime may be allowed to go free. This is undesirable for several obvious reasons.
Current evidence collection and storage may be done in several different ways, but what follows is one example. An officer or investigator may retrieve a piece of evidence at a certain location, and then place that evidence into a bag or envelope. After the person seals the bag or envelope, she may write certain information on it, or on a paper or other record associated with it, to enable the evidence to be positively identified at a later time. That information may include the case number (if known), the type of crime, the victim""s name or names, the suspect""s name or names, the location where the evidence was retrieved, and other identifying information. The officer or investigator may also sign the bag, envelope, paper or record or make some other unique mark, to enable her to positively identify the evidence later. In the collection of property from a suspect prior to incarceration, for example, the property may be similarly bagged and tagged.
Once the evidence or property has been collected, it is brought to a central storage location, such as an evidence room or a file room. There it may be checked in, and the person receiving the evidence may indicate on the bag or envelope that the officer no longer possesses the evidence, but that it is in the possession of the evidence room. This is a transfer of custody; a part of (or link in) the chain of custody required to be proven in many later proceedings at which a party seeks to introduce the evidence. Within the evidence room, the evidence may be stored in a file, envelope, box or other container, or simply on a shelf Whenever the evidence is subsequently removed from its location, the person removing it is supposed to make a new entry on the bag, envelope, paper, or record indicating that that person now possesses the evidence. When the evidence is needed for a trial or other proceeding, the evidence can then be checked out to a person who can bring it along for use in that proceeding.
This and other similar systems of evidence management can suffer from a number of problems, not the least of which is that the system for tracking the chain of custody relies to a great degree on people being willing and able to accurately document possession. It can also be difficult to locate evidence within an evidence room, particularly where, for example, one piece of evidence (such as a handgun) is stored with a large group of items that have a similar appearance. In view of these and other difficulties, it is desirable to provide a better evidence management system than has been used until now.
Certain embodiments of the present invention are illustrated in FIG. 1, which is a schematic illustration of a conversion station.
FIG. 2 illustrates one preferred method for convening a collection of non-RFID tagged pieces of evidence to RFID-tagged evidence.
The present invention has several aspects related to the use of RFID technology in obtaining, tagging, searching for, and otherwise handling evidence and property. As described in more detail below,